Clapping meant something when we were paid for engagement. Since Medium stopped that, it no longer has any value. People will clap 50x for a piece of poorly written, poorly formatted garbage but others will only give a single clap or no clap at all to a piece that is actually worthy. I stopped caring about claps over a year ago. They mean as much as any other stat on here.

I look at how much I'm getting paid as that is the only number that is a (close to) true measure of success.